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After completing my PhD in Second Language Education from McGill University, Canada (2011), I moved to the University of Bristol, where I was Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in Education and Founding Director of the EU-funded Second Language Speech Lab. I moved to the UCL Institute of Education in Nov. 2016 to take up the role of Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL and served as Programme Leader for the MA TESOL Pre-Service, the largest programme in our department. I am currently on the Editorial Board of Language Testing, having previously served on the Boards of Language Assessment Quarterly and Journal of Second Language Pronunciation. I am an expert member of the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA),a strategy group member of the UK Association for Language Testing and Assessment (UKALTA), founding member of the Canadian Association of Language Assessment (CALA), and served as a Member-at-Large on the International Language Testing Association (ILTA) Executive Board. I am co-editor (with Pavel Trofimovich) ofSecond Language Pronunciation Assessment: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2017). This book breaks new ground in at least two respects. First, it is the first edited collection dedicated to the topic of pronunciation assessment. Second, it is the applied linguistics publisher Multilingual Matters' first “gold” open access book, freely available here: https://zenodo.org/record/165465#.WC7lvvmLSUl

In 2017, I launched the world's firstcomprehensibility scale together with Canadian collaborators. This empirically-based pedagogically-oriented tool is designed to help teachers more effectively target the most important linguistic factors for understanding second language English speakers when they perform oral production tasks. The scale development "process" and "product" is featured in an article in Language Testing (Isaacs et al., 2018). The scale and accompanying instructions are freely available here: https://www.iris-database.org/iris/app/home/detail?id=york:932362

I have growing research interests in specific purposes assessment, particularly in language discordant health communication. I am currently a member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Hubs for Trials Methodology Research (HTMR) Recruitment Working Group, which investigates methods for improving recruitment to trials. I recently led a systematic review on ethnic minority representation and the role of language in patient recruitment to telehealth diabetes trials and a small-scale consultancy on analysing senior doctors' simulated consultations in collaboration with a local National Health Service (NHS) Trust. My pump priming project examines the language demands of ethical materials provided to patients in health intervention research. I am also interested in educational assessment in both classroom and high-stakes settings, particularly in higher education contexts and to do with large-scale international assessments (e.g., the OECD's PISA). Another emerging research interest is in technology-mediated assessment related to automated speech recognition, automated scoring, and dialogue systems and I would welcome collaboration in these areas.

My research interests are varied and eclectic, straddling the areas of language assessment, second language acquisition, higher education, speech sciences, psychology, and medicine.My research broadly addresses the pressing social-educational challenge of reducing language barriers and improving the oral communication skills of speakers for whom English is a nondominant language to foster their success in workplace and academic settings and promote social integration. A major research strand relates to profiling the linguistic difficulties that most impede the production of comprehensible (clearly understandable) speech in adult second language learners of English so that these can be targeted in instruction and assessment. Emerging research interests include health communication, automated scoring of speech, and helping learners and assessors calibrate their performances through feedback provision. Much of my work is situated in the mixed methods research paradigm. My primary-authored papers have been published in international peer-reviewed journals, including Applied Psycholinguistics, Health Communication, International Journal of Inclusive Education, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Teaching, Language Testing, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, and TESOL Quarterly. I have a growing track-record of leading test development and validation projects through funded research or consultancy activities for major assessment organisations and regularly serve in an assessment advisory role for different educational stakeholder groups both locally and internationally. I have also acted as an expert evaluator for Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grants and European Commission Horizon 2020 fellowships (MSCA-IF-2017), as a panel member or Chair for best article awards in language testing and pronunciation, and as an assessor for workshop funding and student scholarships.

Teaching Summary

I have taught a wide range of applied linguistics courses in the UK and Canada, having led modules in second language acquisition, pedagogy and curriculum in TESOL, teaching and assessing pronunciation and fluency, questionnaire design and analysis, and mixed methods research. In 2017-18, I served as programme leader for MA TESOL Pre-Service, which trains future English language teachers. I also designed Language Testing and Assessment, a new Master's-level module first offered at the UCL Institute of Education in 2017. This module explores
fundamental considerations and current trends in language testing and
assessment. It is designed for students interested in understanding and
being able to critically evaluate the design, use (and misuse) of language
tests and assessments and/or to apply these principles to construct their own
instruments. I additionally contribute to the MA dissertation module on mixed methods research in the social and behavioural sciences and have conducted methodological workshops in this area at other universities. I also lead assessment literacy and training initiatives and disseminate my work to different stakeholder groups, including faculty education directors, exam board personnel, academic staff and program administrators, secondary school teachers, graduate students, and members of the general public, including via the traditional media (e.g.,BBC Radio, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and social media (e.g., Twitter, blog posts, The Conversation). I enjoy supervising and mentoring early-career researchers and have been actively involved in training graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in all aspects of the research process.